Once, I took a bike trip with a friend. We rode over a thousand kilometers, from north to south, across much of Japan.
It took us fourteen days total with two days of sightseeing and one day partially spent in the hospital to recover from a mild case of heat stroke sandwiched between.
I took a lot of pictures during that trip, but what I remember most about those fourteen days are the things I wanted to photograph but didn’t.
. . .
Somewhere near Itoigawa, in Niigata Prefecture, while riding near the coast, I saw a town that I’ll probably never forget. It appeared from behind a small mountain, down in a valley on my right and spread out to the edge of the sea. The black tiled roofs of its houses shined brightly in the sun. On one of the houses, the one nearest to me, there was a veranda full of bonsai trees. In a single glance I saw all of this, the town, the sea, the shining roof tiles, and this house. In the same glance I noticed that there was a slight waterfall not far from this house. I remember that it trickled down a rock cliff to the side of a walking path and that the air there, drifting up from that valley smelled rich and natural. It was cool and damp and filled with a musky mix of moss, soil, trees, and moisture.
I really have no idea why I would think this, but something about life in that town seemed like it would suit me.
. . .
Once, deep in the countryside of Fukui Prefecture, thirty or more boys and girls in yellow elementary school hats, their bulky Japanese backpacks bouncing up and down, ran excitedly after my friend and I while yelling out, Konnichiwa. They must have run after us for five hundred meters or more down an old narrow road bordered by irrigation gullies which cut through the middle of a large open plain of lush, green rice.
I remember thinking as they ran up to us so enthusiastically and then followed behind us waving their hats in the air and cheering us on with woops and hollers, This doesn’t feel real.
. . .
The casual, relaxed posture of two girls in their early twenties sitting in the doorway of a Snack Bar in Tsuruga City is frozen in my memory. As my friend and I rode by sitting tall on our seats, our hands free from the handlebars, taking long sips of beer they called out to us in Japanese, You can’t do that. You’ll get in trouble!
. . .
I wanted to photograph the speckled look of gravel passing beneath my front tire at speeds of 50 KPH and more while descending switchback mountain roads, but I knew the pictures I could take would never capture the way I sometimes felt when sandwiched between transportation trucks, with their white doors and blackened bumpers never far from my face and the rumbling sound of their engines growling and maxing out their lower gears as they edged up behind me.
Never before and never since have I felt so aware of what even a slight equipment malfunction would cost me.
. . .
Somewhere in the northern reaches of Kyoto Prefecture, I received an ineffable feeling as I rode past silent clusters of old houses and farm buildings half swallowed in low hanging wispy fog and forever stuck, deeply imbedded in the green rice fields of early July. I thought then, if ever I were to film a horror movie, there would be no better place then this. And then various scripts of horror movies that involved some kind of a supernatural presence began seeding themselves in my mind.
Once is a series of micro memoirs inspired by a book of the same title in which Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker, uses a combination of photographs and text to reveal what he considers to be the beginnings of untold stories, which he encourages his readers/viewers to complete.
Similarly, I offer these moments of my life to you as if they were not my own, as if they were in no way connected to me, which in many cases they no longer seem to be. I encourage you to consider these moments as beginnings, beginnings of stories or travels that you are free to write, live, or complete as you see fit.
If you enjoyed this post, please also consider reading my This Is Japan series to learn about everyday life in Japan as seen, discovered, and experienced through the eyes of a foreigner. You can read my latest post here Pet Cemeteries.